Getting local with potato picking
It's scary to see how time flies as we approach our final month of teaching. We have learnt so much about Nepalese culture, village life and have loved getting to know our school children so it will be very hard and sad to say goodbye. Despite this we are still enjoying experiencing new things in the village. This week at school has been a fairly normal one with only one party for a change! We were invited to one of the teacher's houses after school for food which was very nice although we are not entirely sure what the occasion was. However, the main excitement at school seems to be the change in weather. Suddenly on one of the days it began to rain, which we have not had at all in the village so far. The children went wild and got so it excited . Suddenly they all wanted to go to the toilet so they could go outside and were jumping about, shutting all the shutters. It reminded me of when I was at school and it started snowing. It was quite sweet though as a couple of days before we had been teaching them weather so they were getting to use those words which they liked! There was lots of thunder and rain but it was all over quite quickly and became extremely clear which was beautiful. In the following days this weather has continued which has been quite strange.
On Saturday, we had breakfast and were sitting outside in the morning sun about to read our books when Amrita came along . We were not entirely sure what she was saying but she mentioned potatoes so we nodded and went off to her fields. She showed us a picnic she had made so we naively thought we were off to the fields to sit in the sun and enjoy some Nepalese tea but this was certainly not the case. Most of the women and children from the village were out in the fields, working hard picking potatoes. Initially we thought it would be great fun to join in but we quickly realized what hard work it was. The Nepali women seem to squat doing everything from doing dishes, to washing clothes to picking potatoes but we Brits are not used to it and we quickly found we could not feel our legs at all. Nonetheless it was still fun to be among the locals, see what they were doing and help them out. We spent all afternoon in the sun picking potatoes so we were very ready for our Nepali tea and popcorn in the shade. We were exhausted but Amrita still had to carry her potatoes up the hill, on her head. It was a fun day but also gave us some insight into how tough village life is.
On Sunday, there seemed to be a lot of excitement at school which we soon learnt was because of a wedding celebration happening next to the school. There was blaring music all day and decorations were put up everywhere, even on the jeep that would ferry the guests up and down the hill. One of the teachers told us that the couple had already had the wedding ceremony and two young children but decided to have the celebration now. To us this seemed very strange and different from our culture but apparently it is quite normal in Nepal. As per usual after school we were invited to have some food which was delicious.
Overall, it has been a good week an interesting to see more of what happens in the village.
